How Snyk Helps Federal Agencies Prepare for the Genesis Mission Era of AI-Driven Science

The White House’s new Genesis Mission signals a major shift in how the Federal government plans to accelerate discovery using AI, national lab computing power, and massive scientific datasets. For agencies, this means a new wave of AI-enabled research programs, expanded public-private collaboration, and a significant increase in the use of software, data pipelines, and cloud resources to drive scientific missions. Along with this opportunity comes a simple truth: AI can only accelerate discovery if the software behind it is secure.

That’s where Snyk supports agencies—by enabling developers, researchers, and mission teams to build secure software from the start, aligned to Secure by Design and modern federal cybersecurity expectations.

Why the Genesis Mission introduces new security pressure for agencies

• More data and more experimentation: Agencies will be unlocking and federating large datasets, many of which were never designed for AI-scale access. This increases exposure risk and requires tighter control over data lineage, permissions, and software pipelines.

• More partners in the loop: National labs, other federal entities, commercial cloud providers, academia, and industry vendors will work together under new shared platforms. That means expanded software supply chains and stricter expectations for transparency and assurance.

• Faster development cycles: Scientific models, simulations, AI workflows, and data-processing pipelines will move at an accelerated pace. Traditional security review processes won’t be able to keep up.

• Higher stakes for misconfigurations: AI workloads rely heavily on containers, open source, infrastructure-as-code, and cloud services. A single misconfiguration in a pipeline, cluster, or library could compromise sensitive scientific work.

Federal agencies need secure-by-default pipelines that can scale with mission speed.

4 ways Snyk supports federal agencies

1. Secures software supply chains for AI, HPC, and scientific workloads

Snyk gives agencies visibility into all components used in AI and research software—including open source libraries, containers, and IaC templates. Snyk helps agencies identify vulnerable or risky components early, enforce approved library lists, produce SBOMs automatically, and meet federal supply chain expectations (Secure by Design, NIST 800-218, EO 14028, etc.)

2. Embeds security for CI/CD, model-training, and data pipelines

Whether agencies run pipelines in cloud environments, HPC clusters, or hybrid infrastructures, Snyk integrates directly into:

• GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket

• Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI

• Container build systems

• AI/ML workflow orchestration tools

This ensures vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and secrets are caught before software reaches production environments or shared research platforms.

3. Cloud and container security for AI compute systems

The Genesis Mission relies on secure computing—including cloud GPUs, containerized workloads, HPC clusters, research VMs, and hybrid infrastructure. Snyk helps agencies detect misconfigurations across cloud infrastructure, secure container images powering AI workloads, scan infrastructure-as-code templates before deployment, and protect credentials and secrets used in research pipelines.

4. Practical “secure by design” implementation

Snyk meets developers and researchers inside the tools they already use by providing automated fix recommendations, IDE plug-ins for secure coding, policy enforcement for high-risk components, as well as fast feedback loops that align with Agile R&D teams. This operationalizes Secure-by-Design in a way that won’t slow down experiments, model training, or rapid prototyping.

Why this matters for federal missions

The Genesis Mission is accelerating scientific discovery across:

• Clean energy and grid modernization

• Fusion and advanced nuclear research

• Materials science and critical minerals

• Biotechnology and health research

• Quantum, semiconductors, and microelectronics

• Climate modeling and Earth science

These domains rely heavily on software, data, and compute, and securing those systems is essential for mission success.

Snyk helps agencies build software that is secure by design, fully transparent, and aligned with federal AI safety expectations. With Snyk’s AI Security Platform, agencies gain end-to-end protection across code, dependencies, containers, and AI pipelines, enabling trustworthy and compliant AI systems that can power the next generation of U.S. government missions–exactly what the Genesis Mission requires.

Want to learn more about how to secure by design? Download the Snyk AI Security Platform cheat sheet today.